I recently created a video (sorry, it’s a long one) covering what I view as the evidence that cells direct their own evolution. I’m curious what feedback others have on it.

Sorry about the length, but I cover a large number of topics, and try to explain it in light of all of the misunderstandings about the subject which I have seen.

Initially, I have been planning to do an OP on the amazing abilities of plants to “resolve the mathematical equations” in quantum photosynthesis…However, since another issue was raised in one of the last OPs, I’d thought it would be a great opportunity to keep the flow of the same theme going…

In the OP “On variant genetic codes”  the author has presented his case that Craig Venter’s doubt for common descent based solely on the genetic code variants (back in 2011 there were 18 of them) is not enough to doubt common descent…
Based on the discussion that took place at the University of Arizona back in 2011, do you get the impression that Craig Venter’s doubt for common descent is based solely on the fact that there are genetic code variants? I don’t … but you’d judge it for yourself:

Continue reading →

Elizabeth Liddle, who founded this Website, has recently declared that racist remarks on TSZ should be deleted. Moderator Alan Fox would like to additionally ban hate speech, incitement to violence, and discrimination, where these are proscribed by law. However, at the present time, nothing in the Rules of this Website prohibits racism or hate speech. And how does one define these terms, anyway? In this short post, I’d like to offer a few tentative proposals.

It seems to me that a rule that bans racism alone would be too arbitrary. Why ban racism but not sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia or transphobia?

Most pro-ID or pro-evolution blogs have summaries of the year usually with the highlights of the most interesting points or OPs …Larry Moran also has one on the most popular post though of 2017…

If I were in charge of a blog like TSZ my summary of 2018 would ask for the details of the actual conversions: i.e. how effective TSZ has been in what it was set up for. It was apparently set up to attract converts from the support or belief of ID to support or believe that sheer dumb luck in the discussions of life origins…

Continue reading →

I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the recent Max’s demon thread, it might be helpful to revisit that OP for context before continuing on to what follows here. http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/maxs-demon-a-design-detection-riddle/

As promised and for what it’s worth I’d now like to submit my proposal for a method for detecting design in situations like Max’s demon where instead of looking at a single isolated artifact or event we are evaluating a happening that is extended spatiotemporally in some way. Continue reading →

As I have already mentioned it many times before at TSZ quantum mechanics (or quantum physics) has become an inescapable part of many sciences today. Ever since Erwin Schrödinger wrote his book entitled:  “What is life?”, it became clear to many scientists that quantum aspects of life would have to make their way to biology.

But, just as it was the case with epigenetics, Darwinists  have been resistant to anything that would contradict their preconceived dogma of evolution.

Today, most of evolutionist, though still reluctantly, accept the well established epigenetic influence in the changes of life systems, and some, including few regulars at TSZ, act as if epigenetics has always been predicted by evolution…

Will quantum aspects of life be resisted by Darwinists the same way epigenetics or the ever dwindling so-called junk-DNA in human genome was and still is?

My bet would be that it would be very foolish but Darwinists are capable of that in order to protect their holy grail-Darwinian evolution…However, in some papers, Darwinists have begun to mention the quantum processes as “not well understood”; i.e. why evolution would prefer quantum processes over classical ones… It’s a lot of fun reading those papers with the biased Darwinist scrambling to explain why classical Darwinian evolution was bumped by quantum mechanics …

Due to popular demand I will take a quick stab at explaining the applicability of mutual algorithmic information and the information non-growth law to an allele frequency scenario.

First, I’ll outline the allele frequency scenario.

The alleles are 1s and 0s, and the gene G a bitstring of N bits.  A gene’s fitness is based on how many 1s it has, so fitness(G) = sum(G).  The population consists of a single gene, and evolution proceeds by randomly flipping one bit, and if fitness is improved, it keeps that gene, otherwise it keeps the original.  Once fitness(G) = N, the evolutionary algorithm stops and outputs G, which consists of N 1s.  The bitstring that is N 1s will be denoted Y.  We will denote the evolutionary algorithm E, and it is prefixed on an input bitstring X of length N that will be turned into the bitstring of N 1s, so executing the pair on a universal Turing machine outputs the bitstring of 1s: U(E,X) = Y.

Second, I’ll briefly state the required background knowledge on algorithmic mutual information.

Continue reading →

Over at Evolution News, Dr. Douglas Axe argues that merely by using very simple math, we can be absolutely certain that life was designed: it’s an inescapable conclusion. To illustrate his case, he uses the example of a rugged block of marble being transformed by natural weather processes into a statue of a human being. Everyone would agree that this simply can’t happen. And our conclusion wouldn’t change, even if we (i) generously allowed lots and lots of time for the statue to form; (ii) let each body part have a (discrete or continuous) range of permitted forms, or shapes, instead of just one permitted shape; (iii) relaxed the requirement that all body parts have to form simultaneously or in sync, and allowed the different parts of the statue to form at their own different rates; and (iv) removed the requirement that the different parts have to each form independently of one another, and allowed the formation of one part of the statue to influence that of another part.

In his post, Axe rhetorically asks: if we’re so sure that a rugged block of marble could never be transformed by the weather into a human statue, then aren’t we equally entitled to conclude that “blind natural causes” could never have “converted primitive bacterial life into oaks and ostriches and orangutans”? In each case, argues Axe, the underlying logic is the same: when calculating the probability of a scenario which requires many unlikely things to happen, small fractions multiplied by the dozens always result in exceedingly small fractions, and an event which is fantastically improbable can safely be regarded as physically impossible.

In an attempt to persuade Dr. Axe that his logic is faulty on several grounds, I’d like to put eight questions to Dr. Axe, and I sincerely hope that he will be gracious enough to reply.

As a Christmas gift for creationists and all truth enquiring mankind i offer the intellectual foundation of opposing claims by a acclaimed authority.

Creationists/anyone are often enough told they must submit to scientists on conclusions about origins. to reject same conclusions is to reject science or reasonable claims of scientists to being experts in their subject as opposed to anyone else.

Does the free and thoughtful enquirer of truth owe such a deference? I say NO!

It is the intellectual right of all men to not submit to a expert in conclusions but listen to their evidence they have gathered. Then weigh it. In dealing with experts we owe a respect , a presumption, that they have studied uniquely some subject and have gathered knowledge about it. known or new insights.

Continue reading →